His absence, though, had given Dolores ideas. She knew that it was no longer preposterous that a woman might leave her husband. There was even a woman, just a few miles away—a woman with two kids and no husband. The woman lived with her mother, sister, and sister’s husband. And sure, people whispered about her, and some families didn’t even want their kids mingling with hers, but the woman managed. She showed her face at the market and at school to pick up her children. She held birthday parties and invited Carmen.

Dolores knew, too, that once Carmen got older and Elena started school, she could leave the older girl in charge of the younger one and find work more easily. Maybe it was a matter of biding her time. She began to prepare. She hid little bits of her grocery allowance in a slit she cut under the mattress. She loosened a slat of wood from a wall and hid her most valuable possession there—an original printing of Les Misérables given to her by her grandmother Cecilia when she was a child. She started teaching Carmen how to cook simple dishes and put her in charge of little chores like dusting the furniture. And she befriended a neighborhood woman who owned a typewriter. She joined her every few days for coffee and to practice memorizing the keystrokes. The woman thought her simply curious and didn’t mind showing off her prize possession. Dolores joined the woman’s circle of friends who met each day at noon.

Daniel seemed to notice the change. Perhaps she lowered her head a little less or spoke a little more. Whatever it was, the new Dolores sharpened Daniel’s wrath. A month after killing a man for the first time, Daniel broke three of Dolores’s ribs and they had to borrow money to get Dolores to a hospital. She spent weeks in a rigid cast, and Carmen picked up more household chores.

By then, it was no longer just Daniel with his ear to the radio, whispering that, yes, an ouster of Batista might be possible. Dolores heard it even from the neighborhood women. Voices lowered, everyone leaning in, talk over coffee.

“—students in the capital who stormed the presidential palace.”

“—five guerrilleros. Just boys, still baby-faced. Lined up against a wall and shot in the head one by one—”

Typewriter click.

“I heard the americanos pledged to help Batista.”

“Can you imagine? I hear it’s just handfuls of peasants in the mountains, and the troops are losing!”

A ding. Hit return.

“You know what that means. Batista will crack down. On everybody.”

Nervous energy in the air. An uncertainty.